Glimpses of Florence, Part Two

Sometimes it feels wrong to be posting about Florence without simultaneously talking about gelato. Gelato was an integral part of my Italian experience, as most days involved frozen delightfulness in one form or another. My plan for the future is to remember posts such as this one recounting gelato highlights whenever I find myself journeying back to Florence and its sentient statues. If you also do this, then none of us will ever forget that Florence can, for all its varied cultural and historical hotspots and adventures, be evoked simply by the sensation of sweetness melting on the lips.

I feel better about posting ice-cream-less glimpses of Italy now, because I know that you’re all imagining liquorice gelato and meringue semifreddo at this precise moment. Right? Right?

Once upon a time, I climbed to the top of Giotto’s Campanile, the tower adjacent to the Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore. Wikipedia says there are 414 steps involved in such a feat, but I’m certain there were 782 steps. It just. kept. going.

In addition, the staircase was not only unending (hyperbole alert) but incredibly narrow, which meant that there was much pressing close to strangers in the manner of Sardines (the children’s game*, not the omega-3-rich fish).

Once atop the Campanile, there was a lot of Florence to look at. These are the types of photos that are usually interesting only to the person who took them, aren’t they? I do apologise. But you see, there really were a lot of stairs, so I had to take enough photos to justify the entry price and my new-found calves of steel.

There is something a bit odd about walking down a street and suddenly passing an entirely empty (read: unstaffed as well as un-customered) restaurant with nothing to spruik it except a huge slab of fresh meat on a wooden crate.

But there is something utterly irresistible about an open jar of Crema Novi, the chocolate hazelnut spread that is to Nutella what sun-ripened cherry tomatoes fresh off the bush are to mealy supermarket tomatoes fresh out of cold storage. I wish this grew on trees.

* Dear me, I haven’t thought about that game in years and years. Super fun times indeed. For those of you who don’t know it, Sardines is a reverse hide-and-seek. One person is “it” and has to hide while everyone else looks for him/her. As people find the hiding person, they have to cram into the hiding space too, until it becomes pretty darn obvious where the hiding space is**.

** I don’t think this game would work very well in my new Tiny Unit Of Smurf Kitchen. Someone would hide in the shower, then someone would hide in my wardrobe, and then we’d be out of options.

Whisperinggums: I’m sure that if the restaurant had slapped a square of tofu on the crate, it would have been teeming with customers 😉

Camille: If we’d been allowed to play sardines on the one camping trip I went on in grade 9, I might not have switched from outdoor ed to cooking immediately afterwards. Actually, now that I think about it, letting 14-15 year olds play sardines would probably constitute a dereliction of [the teachers’] duty of care…

Stacy: Sadly, I have no idea if it’s available in the US. I certainly haven’t seen it here in Canberra! I’d definitely recommend stocking up in Italy 🙂 Are you visiting Italy soon?

Lorraine: Do let me know if you find it in Aus! I’m also rather glad other people know of and played sardines 🙂

Kath: Silly Italians – don’t they know that all you have to do to catch a pig is sing “Chin Up”?

I LOVE LOVE LOVE the pics from the top of the Campanile, especially that first one! Maybe they’re not interesting only to the person who took them, but rather only to anyone who’s been there :]

Ah! Again, you prove that we are childhood literature buddies. Templeton was my favorite, and I wrote a couple “novels” of my own about him, the most popular (among my second-grade classmates, that is) being the 70-page opus where Templeton ate so much and got so fat that he had to have [what I later found out is called] gastric bypass surgery.

Crema Novi? Who what when where?! I know not of this!

How funny about the game; I don’t think I’m familiar with it. To me, terms like “crammed in like sardines” evoke images of, indeed, sardines-the-fish, packed snugly into their little tins.

Amber: You invented gastric bypass surgery? Wow! 😉 And hurrah for liking the Campanile pictures! Did you, too, experience the awkwardness of being crammed against a wall while 15 people passed you in the other direction, with no one ever stopping to think ‘hey, maybe it would be easier for the single person to go past us, rather than our entire group past her’?

I found a couple of upscale food stores with multiple variations of chocolate-hazelnut spread – even some by fancy chocolate companies like Amadei. In all honesty, though, I prefer peanut butter to nutella-esque substances 🙂 And the game really does end up with everyone crammed together like sardines, so it’s a fitting name 😀